The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, fired a direct shot across the bow of the technocrats who control social media platforms today.

Chairman Pai righteously called out Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other platform control agents for being ideologically biased, and using their platforms to target their ideological opposition.

Defending his plan to roll back Obama’s one-sided internet rules, the Chairman outlined how he intended to ensure a free, fair and open internet. [Full Speech Transcript below]

“The Internet is the greatest free-market innovation in history. It’s allowed us to live, play, work, learn, and speak in ways that were inconceivable a generation ago. But it didn’t have to be that way. Its success is due in part to regulatory restraint. Democrats and Republicans decided in the 1990s that this new digital world wouldn’t be centrally planned like a slow-moving utility. Instead, they chose Internet freedom. The results speak for themselves.

Now, much has been said and written over the course of the last week about the plan to restore Internet freedom. But much of the discussion has brought more heat than light. So this afternoon, I’d like to cut through the hysteria and hot air and speak with you in plain terms about the plan. First, I’ll explain what it will do. Second, I’ll discuss why I’m advancing it. And third, I’ll respond to the main criticisms that have been leveled against it.

First: what will the plan do?

When you cut through the legal terms and technical jargon, it’s very simple. The plan to restore Internet freedom will bring back the same legal framework that was governing the Internet three years ago today and that has governed the Internet for most of its existence.

Let me repeat this point. The plan will bring back the same framework that governed the Internet for most of its existence. If you’ve been reading some of the media coverage about the plan, this might be news to you. After all, returning to the legal framework for Internet regulation that was in place three years ago today doesn’t sound like “destroying the Internet” or “ending the Internet as we know it.” And it certainly isn’t good clickbait. But facts are stubborn things.

And here are some of those facts. Until 2015, the FCC treated high-speed Internet access as a lightly-regulated “information service” under Title I of the Communications Act. A few years ago, the Obama Administration instructed the FCC to change course. And it did, on a party-line vote in 2015; it classified Internet access as a heavily-regulated “telecommunications service” under Title II of the Communications Act. If the plan is adopted on December 14, we’ll simply reverse the FCC’s 2015 decision and go back to the pre-2015 Title I framework.

Now, I’m sure some of you out there are still thinking that there must be more to it than this. And I’ll confess that once the plan to restore Internet freedom is adopted, one thing will be different compared to three years ago. Consumers will be empowered by getting more information from Internet service providers (ISPs). My ISP transparency rule will be stronger than it was in 2014.

That’s the “what.” Next: why? Why am I proposing to return to the pre-2015 regulatory
framework? The most important reason is that it was an overwhelming success.

Think back to what the Internet looked like in 1996. E-mail was still the killer app. AOL was the most visited website. The top 20 sites included the homepages for four universities (Carnegie Mellon, Illinois, Michigan, and MIT). Forget about YouTube; just downloading a static webpage took 30 seconds, and you paid by the hour for access. And being online also tied up your phone line.

So how did we get from there to here?

As I said at the outset, a huge part of the answer is the Telecommunications Act of 1996. As part of this landmark law, President Clinton and a Republican Congress agreed that it would be the policy of 2the United States “to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet . . . unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”

They deliberately rejected thinking of the Internet as Ma Bell, or a water company, or a subway system. Encouraged by light-touch regulation, the private sector invested over $1.5 trillion to build out wired and wireless networks throughout the United States. 28.8k modems eventually gave way to gigabit fiber connections.

U.S. innovators and entrepreneurs used this open platform to start companies that have become global giants. (Indeed, the five biggest companies in America today by market capitalization are Internet companies.) America’s Internet economy became the envy of the world, and the fact that the largest technology companies of the digital economy are homegrown has given us a key competitive advantage.

But then, in early 2015, the FCC chose a decidedly different course for the Internet. At the
urging of the Obama Administration, the FCC scrapped the tried-and-true, light touch regulation of the Internet and replaced it with heavy-handed micromanagement.

It did this despite the fact that the Internet wasn’t broken in 2015. There was no market failure that justified the regulatory sledgehammer of Title II. But no matter; 21st century networks would now be regulated under creaky rules that were the hot new thing back in the 1930s, during the Roosevelt Administration.

The results have been bad for consumers. The first negative consumer impact is less
infrastructure investment. The top complaint consumers have about the Internet is not and has never been that their ISP is doing things like blocking content; it’s that they don’t have enough access and competition. Ironically, Title II has made that concern even worse by reducing investment in building and maintaining high-speed networks. In the two years of the Title II era, broadband network investment declined by $3.6 billion—or more than 5%. Notably, this is the first time that such investment has declined outside of a recession in the Internet era.

When there’s less investment, that means fewer next-generation networks are built. That means fewer jobs for Americans building those networks. And that means more Americans are left on the wrong side on the digital divide.

The impact has been particularly serious for smaller Internet service providers. They don’t have the time, money, or lawyers to navigate a thicket of complex rules. I have personally visited some of them, from Spencer Municipal Utilities in Spencer, Iowa to Wave Wireless in Parsons, Kansas. So it’s no surprise that the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association, which represents small fixed wireless companies that typically operate in rural America, surveyed its members and found that over 80% “incurred additional expense in complying with the Title II rules, had delayed or reduced network expansion, had delayed or reduced services and had allocated budget to comply with the rules.”

Other small companies, too, have told the FCC that these regulations have forced them to cancel, delay, or curtail fiber network upgrades. And nearly two dozen small providers submitted a letter saying the FCC’s heavy-handed rules “affect our ability to find financing.”

That’s what makes Title II regulations so misplaced. However well intentioned, they’re hurting the very small providers and new entrants that are best positioned to bring additional competition into the marketplace. As I warned before the FCC went down this road in 2015, a regulatory structure designed for a monopoly will inevitably move the market in the direction of a monopoly.

Turning away from investment, the second negative consumer impact from the FCC’s heavy-handed regulations has been less innovation. We shifted from a wildly successful framework of permission-less innovation to a mother-may-I approach that has had a chilling effect. One major company, for instance, reported that it put on hold a project to build out its out-of-home Wi-Fi network due to uncertainty about the FCC’s regulatory stance.

A coalition of 19 municipal Internet service providers —that is, city-owned nonprofits— have told the FCC that they “often delay or hold off from rolling out a new feature or service because [they] cannot afford to deal with a potential complaint and enforcement action.” Ask yourself: How is this good for consumers?

Much of the problem stems from the vague Internet conduct standard that the Commission adopted in 2015—a standard that I’m proposing to repeal. Under this standard, the FCC didn’t say specifically what conduct was prohibited. Instead, it gave itself a roving mandate to second-guess new service offerings, new features, and new business models. Understandably, businesses asked for clarity on how this standard would be applied. My predecessor’s answer, and I quote: “We don’t know, we’ll have to see where things go.” That’s the very definition of regulatory uncertainty.

Well, where did things go? It’s telling that the Commission’s first target under the Internet
conduct standard was consumer-friendly free-data plans. Wireless companies are offering customers the option of enjoying services like streaming video or music exempt from any data limits.

These plans have proven quite popular, especially among lower-income Americans. Yet the FCC had met the enemy, and it was free data. It started a lengthy investigation of free-data plans and would have cracked down on them had the presidential election turned out differently.

So that’s what I’m proposing to do and why I’m proposing to do it.

Next, I’d like to take on the main criticisms I’ve heard directed against the plan and separate fact from fiction—one claim at a time. And given that some of the more eye-catching critiques have come from Hollywood celebrities, whose large online followings give them out-sized influence in shaping the public debate, I thought I’d directly respond to some of their assertions.

Perhaps the most common criticism is that ending Title II utility-style regulation will mean the end of the Internet as we know it. Or, as Kumail Nanjiani, a star of HBO’s Silicon Valley put it, “We willnever go back to a free Internet.”

But here’s the simple truth: We had a free and open Internet for two decades before 2015, and we’ll have a free and open Internet going forward.

Many critics don’t seem to understand that we are moving from heavy-handed regulation to light-touch regulation, not a completely hands-off approach. We aren’t giving anybody a free pass. We are simply shifting from one-size-fits-all pre-emptive regulation to targeted enforcement based on actual market failure or anticompetitive conduct.

For example, the plan would restore the authority of the Federal Trade Commission, America’s premier consumer protection agency, to police the practices of Internet service providers. And if companies engage in unfair, deceptive, or anticompetitive practices, the Federal Trade Commission would be able to take action.

This framework for protecting a free and open Internet worked well in the past, and it will work well again. Chairman Ohlhausen will soon offer further details.

The plan would also empower the Federal Trade Commission to once again police broadband providers’ privacy and data security practices. In 2015, we stripped the Federal Trade Commission of that authority. But the plan would put the nation’s most experienced privacy cop back on the beat. That should be a welcome development for every American who cares about his or her privacy.

Another concern I’ve heard is that the plan will harm rural and low-income Americans.

Cher, for example, has tweeted that the Internet “Will Include LESS AMERICANS NOT MORE” if my proposal is adopted. But the opposite is true. The digital divide is all too real. Too many rural and low-income Americans are still unable to get high-speed Internet access. But heavy-handed Title II regulations just make the problem worse! They reduce investment in broadband networks, especially in rural and low-income areas. By turning back time, so to speak, and returning Internet regulation to the pre-2015 era, we will expand broadband networks and bring high-speed Internet access to more Americans, not fewer.

Then there is this critique that offered by Mark Ruffalo: “Taking away #NetNeutrality is the Authoritarian dream. Consolidating information in the hands of a few controlled by a few. Dangerous territory.” I will confess when I saw this tweet I was tempted to just say “Hulk . . . wrong” and move on.

But I’ve seen similar points made elsewhere, including in one e-mail asking: “Do you really want to be the man who was responsible for making America another North Korea?”

These comments are absurd. Getting rid of government authority over the Internet is the exact opposite of authoritarianism. Government control is the defining feature of authoritarians, including the one in North Korea.

Another common criticism is that after the plan is adopted, the Internet will become like cable television, and Americans will have to pay more to reach certain groups of websites.

George Takei of Star Trek fame recently tweeted an article claiming that this was happening in Portugal, which doesn’t have net neutrality, and that this would happen in the United States if the plan were adopted.

There are a few problems with this. For one thing, the Obama Administration itself made clear that curated Internet packages are lawful in the United States under the commission’s 2015 rules.

That’s right: the conduct described in a graphic that is currently being spread around the Internet is currently allowed under the previous Administration’s Title II rules. So, for example, if broadband providers want to offer a $10 a month package where you could only access a few websites like Twitter and Facebook,they can do that today.

Indeed, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently pointed out that net neutrality
rules don’t prohibit these curated offerings. So the complaint by Mr. Takei and others doesn’t hold water. They’re arguing that if the plan is adopted, Internet service providers would suddenly start doing something that net-neutrality rules already allow them to do. But the reason that Internet service providers aren’t offering such packages now, and
likely won’t offer such packages in the future, is that American consumers by and large don’t want them.

Additionally, as several fact-checkers have pointed out, as part of the European Union, Portugal does have net neutrality regulations! Moreover, the graphic relates to supplemental data plans featuring specific apps that customers could get from one provider, beyond the various unrestricted base plans that provider offered. As one report put it, this example “is pointing to an example that has nothing to do with net neutrality.”

Shifting gears, Alyssa Milano tweeted, “We’ve faced a lot of issues threatening our democracy in the last year. But, honestly, the FCC and @AjitPaiFCC’s dismantling of #NetNeutrality is one the biggest.”

I’m threatening our democracy? Really? I’d like to see the evidence that America’s
democratic institutions were threatened by a Title I framework, as opposed to a Title II framework, during the Clinton Administration, the Bush Administration, and the first six years of the Obama Administration.

Don’t hold your breath—there is none. If this were Who’s the Boss?, this would be an opportunity for Tony Danza to dish out some wisdom about the consequences of making things up.

This reminds me of another point, one that’s been brought home to me the past few days.

This debate needs, our culture needs, a more informed discussion about public policy. We need quality information, not hysteria, because hysteria takes us to unpleasant, if not dangerous places. We can disagree on policy. But we shouldn’t demonize, especially when all of us share the same goal of a free and open Internet.

Anyway, the criticism of this plan comes from more than just Hollywood. I’m also well aware that some in Silicon Valley have criticized it. Twitter, for example, has said that it strongly opposes it and “will continue to fight for an open Internet, which is indispensable to free expression, consumer choice, and innovation.”

Now look: I love Twitter, and I use it all the time. But let’s not kid ourselves; when it comes to an open Internet, Twitter is part of the problem. The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate.

As just one of many examples, two months ago, Twitter blocked Representative Marsha
Blackburn from advertising her Senate campaign launch video because it featured a pro-life message.

Before that, during the so-called Day of Action, Twitter warned users that a link to a statement by one company on the topic of Internet regulation “may be unsafe.” And to say the least, the company appears to have a double standard when it comes to suspending or de-verifying conservative users’ accounts as opposed to those of liberal users. This conduct is many things, but it isn’t fighting for an open Internet.

And unfortunately, Twitter isn’t an outlier. Indeed, despite all the talk about the fear that
broadband providers could decide what Internet content consumers can see, recent experience shows that so-called edge providers are in fact deciding what content they see.

These providers routinely block or discriminate against content they don’t like.

The examples from the past year alone are legion. App stores barring the doors to apps from even cigar aficionados because they are perceived to promote tobacco use. Streaming services restricting videos from the likes of conservative commentator Dennis Prager on subjects he considers “important to understanding American values.”

Algorithms that decide what content you see (or don’t), but aren’t disclosed themselves. Online platforms secretly editing certain users’ comments. And of course, American companies caving to repressive foreign governments’ demands to block certain speech—
conduct that would be repugnant to free expression if it occurred within our borders.

In this way, edge providers are a much bigger actual threat to an open Internet than broadband providers, especially when it comes to discrimination on the basis of viewpoint.

That might explain why the CEO of a company called Cloudflare recently questioned whether “is it the right place for tech companies to be regulating the Internet.” He didn’t offer a solution, but remarked that “what I know is not the right answer is that a cabal of ten tech executives with names like Matthew, Mark, Jack, . . . Jeff are the ones choosing what content goes online and what content doesn’t go online.”

Nonetheless, these companies want to place much tougher regulations on broadband providers than they are willing to have placed upon themselves. So let’s be clear. They might cloak their advocacy in the public interest, but the real interest of these Internet giants is in using the regulatory process to cement their dominance in the Internet economy.

And here’s the thing: I don’t blame them for trying. But the government shouldn’t aid and abet this effort. We have no business picking winners and losers in the marketplace. A level playing field, not regulatory arbitrage, is what best serves consumers and competition.

To wrap up, I’d like to quote from an article in The New York Times: “Some experts say the
government’s planned withdrawal from Internet management . . . is the best way to bring marketplace efficiencies to the increasingly commercial global network. But pessimists worry that this critical part of the emerging electronic web could become a patchwork of private roads.”

This passage was written way back in 1994 about the decision to privatize the Internet.

History has proven that policymakers made the right decision then. And that they made the right decision in 1996, when they applied a light-touch regulatory framework to the Internet.

So when you get past the wild accusations, fearmongering, and hysteria, here’s the boring bottom line: the plan to restore Internet freedom would return us to the light touch, market-based approach under which the Internet thrived. And that’s why I am asking my colleagues to vote for it on December 14.”

FCC Chairman Pai failed to mention one of the biggest roadblocks – local laws regarding the physical layer of the inet. That is where the other half of the prob lies.

Other competitors and inet monopolies try to access existing infrastructure, i.e. utility poles, etc., to roll out a competitive other network, and the big inet monopolies bring out the lobbyists and lawyers and effectively block the smaller markets from upgrades.

“Google Fiber recently tried to build new fiber networks in a large number of cities like Nashville and Louisville, but ran face first into an antiquated utility pole attachment process. As it stands, when a new competitor tries to enter a market, it needs to contact each individual ISP to have them move their own utility pole gear. This convoluted and bureaucratic process can take months, and incumbent ISPs (which often own the poles in question) often slow things down even further by intentionally dragging their feet.”

Please, this needs to be addressed. There are many who summarily dismiss the use of wireless due to the ease of hacking. Ever try to hack a physical fiber network? (NEVER physically hack a fiber. Injurious to your health.)

This is why the kids want the backbone – that highway on which the World Wide Web rides – to be a government op, like the physical interstate highways.

All wrong. I’ve worked for Lucent as a programmer and maintained several networks in other places.

The basic premise of net neutrality is simple. Any traffic coming off the backbone into the home and visa-versa shall not be distinguished. Traffic coming from Wallmart or Amazon are treated the same. Or Youtube and Vimeo.

This was basically an accepted practice untill 2005 when Comcast started throttling Bittorrent traffic. Now it is true that most bittorrent traffic is illegal, a lot is not. I for example use it when some site that hosts videos gives me the choice. ( I think Princeton-AIS does. ) It is less strenuous on the hoster. What’s more Comcast did not throttle because iot was illegal, they throtteled because torrenters were using a lot of bandwidth, but it was bandwidth they paid for.

At that point the FCC tried to stop Comcast ( they did actually ) but the courts said that they could not unless they reclassified broadband as Title II. Which is what happened two years ago.

BTW the fundamental distinction between Title I vs Title II is that Title I is considered a service, and Title II is a common carrier. What does that mean? Title I entities like cable television provide you a service — specifically their programming. Title II entities connect people to each other where they can then provide each other with service. Which does the internet sound more like?

As for installing a regulation, you do realize that the internet is one of the most highly regulated industries around? That the reason that we have the big three ISPs is that they lobbied for the present regulations and used them to drive the competition out of business. That they use plenty of regulations to their own advantage?

To give two examples, many municipalities with inferior internet started making deals with small ISPs to build and maintain an internet structure. The big three have gone to state legislatures to pass laws that prevent municipalities from doing this.

Example two. if one of the big three want to put a pole to run their wires on your land they will use the law to get them an easement whether or not you want them to?

So this stuff about regulating the internet is just nonsense. It already is.

I agree that companies like Google and Twitter should not be allowed to determine what they show and what they do not. But that has nothing to do with net neutrality. In fact I think that some form of net neutrality should be imposed on any part of the internet that is considered basic infrastructure– DNS, search, hosting, DDOS mitigation. But that should not excuse the ISPs.

In fact as an exLucent employee I remember the mandatory quarterly AA meetings, a practice they inherited from AT&T. Give them free reign and watch them go SJW as badly ass Google, FB, etc.

tonyE, I too remember DARP and applauded the few connections back then. Without Darp and a couple of founders, we would not have Internet at all and the freedom it allowed to expand. Today we have algorithms that allow FB, Google, etc. to control the Net and what we get deciding on whether we are leftists are freedom lovers. It is OUR Net and not theirs, PERIOD! Thank Pai for great thinking, stating the true facts, and getting our Net back to everyone and not just the rich few in Silicon Valley.

I beg to differ Wolfy. Scratch even so slightly and you get a greedy SOB that uses their wealth to buy favors from other greedy and stupic public servants! ha ha They want everything skewed to their favor, no competition, unlevel playing field, judges in their pocket, you name it. I don’t really care where it originated, if the shoe fits, wear it.

Yes, we should be thankful. I just hope he has the votes from the others on the commission.

There is a much simpler way to look at all of this, and one which has never failed me. If Obama wanted something, it was bad for America and freedom. If he opposed it, it was good for America and freedom. Ironclad principle.

LEADER TECHNOLOGIES owned the patents for scalable, source coding, mandatory for functional internet. These patents were declared national ”security” and given to NSA/CIA frontmen using the Rockefeller model for monopolies.

Alex Bell stole the Antonio Meucci patents for telephone, set up AT&T.

Marconi stole Tesla patents for radio, set up RCA.

Langley-Curtiss-Bell stole Wright Brothers patents, set up Curtiss Aircraft , the wealthiest corporation in the world in 1945. Profits then invested in IBM, and then the Gates, Zucky, Bezo and Musk frontmen.

My neighbor was VP of development at Bolt Beranek and Neuman (now BBN Technologies) in the 70’s and early 80’s. BBN was contracted to build the first routers that enabled ARPANET.

In 1982 we got together in his basement and watched his teletype recognize the emerging protocol now referred to as TCP/IP. We sent a message to Hawaii from Burlington, MA and stood around the teletype as it printed out the return message. Not long after that, Symbolics.com, just down the road, became the first registered domain.

After that basement get-together, I was offered a job at BBN. After a day of interviewing, I asked what I would be doing. They said, “Anything you want as long as it makes us money.”

Pai is a true freedom evangelist. Under Title I, the Internet as an Information Service was virtually unregulated….free market capitalism at its best. Under Title II, the Internet was regulated like an old Ma Bell monopoly telecommunications Service, with constriction on competition and new market entrants to protect the Verizon’s, COMCASTs and COX Cable ISP operations.

The true revolution in telecommunications, computer and TV communications was the adoption of TCP/IP Internet protocols for voice, data, and video transmission which obsoleted the old Bell System point to point wireline switched network replaced with the routed Internet. With the Internet of Things(IoT) rapidly being implemented on millions of devices like TVs, refrigerators, boilers, and cars, everything is going to be connectable via the Cloud. The FCC should return to a light touch approach and let the Internet Services marketplace self regulate and send the government control freaks to hell.

Yeah that is true! But from the hissy fit the media and the usual suspects throw, you’d think he was the second coming of Satan. But that role is already taken by Hillary.

When someone like the Obozo Administration pushes something called “Net Neutrality” you know they are doing the 1984 version of word speak and mean just the opposite. More like Net Neutering with less freedom and more gummint control over “another” aspect of our lives. As if all the ABC intelligence agencies don’t have the means in any case to capture every single keystroke we make, even error corrections & deletions, and changes, no matter how sneaky we think we are being. It is ALL being filed away somewhere for later use when needed.

After PDJT was elected, I sent a message to the Transition website team to please make Pai the Chairman of the FCC. During the Obama years *shudder* he kept the Right abreast of the nefarious things Obama’s cronies were up to.

He will be a good steward of Internet and the rest of the FCC areas.

BTW, be afraid Twitter, you are now in the crosshairs. No more Obama to protect you from your bad behavior.

Why would Brennan touch anything? He was in bed with Hillary and her Moose Limb loving acts of benevolence (to the tune of billions!) along with Obozo. He was a traitor and a bird of the same feather as Hillary. The whole gang was sick.

It was unlawful for Obama to give away ICANN — it was not his to give away!

It was an asset that belonged to the US and to we-the-people.
Only congress has the authority to dispose of US assets.

We should demand the return of the Net Root Zone.
It should be under the jurisdiction of our Constitution, namely under our 1st Amendment.

Obama said that he thought it was “too much power” for the US to have all by itself.
What bullsh-t.
We built it.
It should be ours!

Obama was not acting in the ‘best interests of his country’ when he committed that illegal act.
But he knew…that under International Control…the Internet could be taxed by other countries and freedom of speech could be killed.
That’s why he did it.

I remember that you were one of the voices bringing ICANN to attention before the election, wheatietoo. There were almost enough votes to at least delay the transfer until after the election. But it was McTurtle who wouldn’t even let the bill come to the floor. I assume Rotten Ryan did more or less the same in the house. Both of them are lousy traitors to the country.

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To anyone following this issue; This is a good podcast with Ajit Pai covering some of the same things that Sundance covered in his article.

trial, you are spot on, that is PDJT’s way. PDJT first tries to change the swamp’s system into what the system should be. If that doesn’t work the Administration creates a new system, while dismantling the swamp’s system (or render it impotent). Think NoCare, then DACA, and now CFPB.

So basically the left does what the left always does: accuses others of doing what they actually want to do while claiming it is they who are trying to stop the very thing they want to happen. They haven’t changed their tactics much since Lenin and Marx.

The left always wants complete control of every avenue of information, be it newspapers, TV, education, etc. No suprise they want control over how the internet operates too. Freedom is the enemy of the left, always will be.

I wonder how that change three years ago affected the sudden loss of drive to get fiber optic into homes. Fiber optic is really fast (unlike the wireless options) and reliable and would give the cable companies some true competition. It never made it to my neighborhood. I can choose expensive and outage prone cable or expensive and frequently broken DSL.

Please chairman Pai, how can we get that last mile fiber optic installed?

“The Internet is the greatest free-market innovation in history.”
I agree; but such retains the capacity for greed, fraud, and other money manipulation! Sir Pai needs both P45 and the rest of us to be carefully honing the pitchforks and reloading everything after a good day in practicing, to fire precisely in correct direction, else momma bear will come up and ‘eat your face off’.! 🙂

These are the most dangerous of monopolies but they are also the simplest to break up.

These companies are in bed with the deep state and globalists. They choke liberty and commerce. The State and corporate media gives them unfair advantage to which they can control markets and information – a fatal cocktail. Fascism with a smiley face.

Open commerce benefited in the long run when Microsoft, IBM, Bell and many other monopolies were broken through even mediocre corporate re-organization.

GoogleAppleAmazonFacebookTwitterMicrosoft are even easier to break up now by forcing open Standards, APIs and open software. – there are TRUE open standards and open software organization out there.

I say start with Facebook and Twitter. Easy to open a few APIs to allow free market competition.

Tackle Google’s Android and make it open source – it is already set up as a pseudo “open-source” project.

The OASIS and Eclipse organizations and their governance models can handle these jobs with ease.

Splendid. I’ve followed Pai for several years and believe him to be a genuine advocate for free speech and an eminently reasonable man — the kind of true American liberal we once produced but which now are becoming rare birds in public life. He also has a sly but steely streak of the warrior.

Yes, the Tech giants are using a giant cloaking device, also known as a smoke screen, to fool the public into thinking that Trump is anti-internet freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just the amount of PR around this issue should be a big clue to anyone that something is up and the big guys don’t like it one bit and are fighting it tooth and nail. And their paid help in Congress has been largely neutered by Trump and his team and they are going apoplectic. I love it!

I hope Congress is willing to undo Obama’s partisan political takeover of the technology sector (and every other sector of the economy and agency of government)

Technology could be about to enter another phase of development which would put too much power in the hands of leftist/corrupt individuals such as Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jack and the rest of Obama’s co-conspirators.

For example…undergraduate chemistry students at the small university in Valdosta, Georgia have discovered and are in the process of patenting a new method of producing graphene:

“Graphene is a layer of carbon that is one atom thick and arranged in a honeycomb pattern. Highly elastic and almost completely transparent, it is found in graphite, the black material that makes up pencil lead. While graphite is soft and falls apart in layers quite easily, the layers of graphene within graphite are ultra strong and resilient.

First discovered in 2004, graphene has been described as a “miracle material” and “the material of tomorrow” because of its properties. It is 100,000 times thinner than a human hair and possesses the tensile strength to hold up an elephant, the said. It is believed to be the strongest material yet discovered — harder than a diamond and 200 times stronger than steel, according to the researchers. It is also the best conductor of heat and electricity known to humans, they said.

“Graphene is a fairly new topic for scientists,” said Ashley Pitts, an international student from Belize and one of the student researchers. She is a chemistry major and expects to graduate in December. “Due to its structure, it provides a lot of great properties that can be utilized in various aspects of our everyday life, ranging from healthcare to technology. With the use of graphene, many of our day-to-day activities can be improved for the greater good of all.”

Scientists are eyeing graphene as a way to make electronic devices faster and significantly more powerful, versatile and energy efficient. It also has the potential to be used in medicine as part of a drug delivery system that is much safer for patients, they said.”

With easily produced graphene and its subsequent applications, the internet and healthcare in the hands of leftist totalitarian intolerant political tyrants, would be a horror – the stuff of nightmares.
The US and world might never recover equity, freedom and sanity.

Many thanks for a great article and the pics attached to it. I am going to share this it with a woman I know who heads the STEM program for a Section 8 housing learning centers.. Maybe she can incorporate this into her program giving the kids more ideas to think about carrying out than just the usual basketball player or rap singer dream.

The only thing I disagree with Ajit is that he should have called out Cloudflare way more than he did. They are honestly the worst. They are pro-Obama net neutrality. They said they would throttle certain government officials internet to show the dangers of the so called ISPs. And if they support net neutrality for its so called reason then they should not be censoring and being the ringleader in shutting down sites like they did with Daily Stormer no matter what you think of them. That would have been a walk off grand slam if he did that.

Sundance, a YUGE thank you for this excellent overview with Pai’s simple and straightforward common sense explanation of what Obama and his marxist cronies pulled in 2015. My younger son and his girlfriend have bought into the lies of the left on this issue so I was happy to forward this link to them. Also for Treehouse readers, conservative radio host Joe Pags will be interviewing Pai on his Wednesday, November 29, 2017 radio show. You can get the commercial free podcast via the IHeartRadio app.

The 2015 Open Internet Order, which was upheld by a Federal appeals court in 2016, spells out the following net neutrality rules:

-No blocking. The ISP can’t block access to any legal website, app, service or non-harmful device with an ability to connect to the web.

-No throttling. The ISP can’t slow down the connection or worsen the quality of the connection to any legal website, app, service or connected device.

–No paid prioritization. ISPs can’t give a website, app, service or device a faster or better internet connection in exchange for payment; in other words, sites and apps can’t pay-to-play, and customers can’t be charged extra for an app or site to connect faster.

–Internet conduct rule. ISPs can’t unreasonably interfere with or unreasonably disadvantage consumers’ access to legal online content or sites, or their ability to create content or websites. So they can’t discriminate against legal sites or censor content.
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So anyone that supports this repeal wants:
Allow ISP to block your access to any/all sites on the internet
Allow ISP to throttle your access to any/all sites, data, content on the internet
Allow ISP to prioritize your bandwidth / data access to any/all sites, data, content on the internet
Allow ISP to hide their broadband speeds and rates from you
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Can someone here please tell me legitimate reasons why I should support the repeal of these rules?

I pay ~$85 / mnth for 100mbs access to the internet and I want:
– Non-throttled, non-prioritized, every bit of transmitted data is equal to any other bit of transmitted data based on protocol routing better practices to access any/all sites/data/content on the internet
– The continued use of speedof.me to tell me how my bandwidth capabilities (upload/download)

Well Net Neutrality didn’t help Daily Stormer. While people are freaking about what may happen with this gone, people supporting Net Neutrality shut down that site. So we already know who will block sites and that is not the ISPs

Razzer, you obviously can’t connect the dots between the service you currently get and the future service that will be enabled by innovation under Title I. ISP’s will be less likely to need to throttle, prioritize bandwidth etc. but it is the companies like Google, Twitter, etc. who are doing all the blocking, censoring and putting limits on free speech. Not the ISP’s. They provide the pipe. The content providers, those that feed the pipe, want to control what is allowed onto the pipe. Get it? I guess you don’t. Try reading the speech again and thinking it through without your liberal slanted brain in gear.

My son and I just had a discussion about Internet Service Providers (ISP) being title 2 vs title 1. To help me understand, he said DirectTv is title 1 because they provide content, and Verizon would be title 2 because they connect us to DirectTv. DirectTv is allowed to charge us for specific content in packages. So, basic $50 and add in sports $10. He said if they remove title 2 regs from the ISPs, then ISPs can create packages like DirectTv. If they have a contract with Mircosoft, they can say our company will only support their products, or to you pay more for a different product.

ISPs charge for access speed and volume. Will ISPs be allowed to charge for other categories? Can they limit my operating system choices? Can they carry content too — become a DirectTv/Verizon or DirectTv/ATT and then tell me like, ATT will only allow you to use DIrectTv?

I hope this makes sense.

I always read this site. I look for sundance and treeper views. I told my son we should read the regulations too, but time is limited.

What I’m concerned about is censorship by the Internet monopolies: Google, Facebook, Twitter and You-Tube. How will less government control help to break up these monopolies, or ensure freedom of expression on these platforms? It’s getting so MOST of information I’m seeking is censored, even information on such benign topics as natural health remedies.

Another area that bothers me: I don’t have TV. I rely on the internet. I used to be able to watch presidential debates on the internet, back when Romney ran for example. But when Trump was running for president, I often could not find any internet website that carried the debates, so I usually missed them. How is this “internet freedom”? Indeed, I was unable even to watch his inauguration.

KPomeroy: You must be fairly new to theconservativetreehouse.com. All rallies were linked at the site, often several links were available. Videos were also posted for those who had time conflicts. I didn’t miss one. I don’t have cable service either and stay far away from watching TV networks.

To answer your question, Ajit says he will let loose the dogs at the FTC, Baby!! They are the ones that Obama and friends cut out of the loop in 2016. The cops on the communications beat will be back taking names and kicking ass! I hope??